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A CHRISTMAS SERMON 



CHRISTMAS 
SERMON 

BY 

Robert Louis Stevenson 




NEW YORK 

Charles Scribner's Sons 

1900 



Copyright, 1900, by Charles Scribner's Sons 



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OCT 5 1900 



stcowr con. 

OROhH r>'V»SION, 

OCT 18 1900 



D. B. Updike, TJie Merrymount Press, Boston 



A 
CHRISTMAS SERMON 

BY the time this paper appears, 
I shall have been talking for 
twelve months ;^ and it is thought 
I should take my leave in a formal 
and seasonable manner. Valedictory 
eloquence is rare, and death- bed say- 
ings have not often hit the mark of 
the occasion. Charles Second, wit 
and sceptic, a man whose life had 
been one long lesson in human in- 
credulity, an easy-going comrade, a 
manoeuvring king — ^ remembered and 
embodied all his wit and scepticism 
along with more than his usual good 
humour in the famous "I am afraid, 
gentlemen, I am an unconscionable 
time a-dying." 

1 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 



./xN unconscionable time a-dying — 
there is the picture ("I am afraid, 
gentlemen,") of your life and of mine. 
The sands run out, and the hours are 
"numbered and imputed," and the 
days go by ; and when the last of 
these finds us, we have been a long 
time dying, and what else ? The very 
length is something, if we reach that 
hour of separation undishonoured ; 
and to have lived at all is doubtless 
(in the soldierly expression) to have 
served. There is a tale in Tacitus of 
how the veterans mutinied in the Ger- 
man wilderness ; of how they mobbed 
Germanicus, clamouring to go home ; 
and of how, seizing their general's 
hand, these old, war-worn exiles 
passed his finger along their tooth- 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

less gums. Sunt lacrymce rerum : this 
was the most eloquent of the songs 
of Simeon. And when a man has 
lived to a fair age, he bears his marks 
of service. He may have never been 
remarked upon the breach at the head 
of the army ; at least he shall have 
lost his teeth on the camp bread. 

The idealism of serious people in 
this age of ours is of a noble char- 
acter. It never seems to them that 
they have served enough ; they have 
a fine impatience of their virtues. It 
were perhaps more modest to be 
singly thankful that we are no worse. 
It is not only our enemies, those des- 
perate characters — it is we ourselves 
who know not what we do; — thence 
springs the glimmering hope that 
perhaps we do better than we think: 
that to scramble through this random 

3 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

business with hands reasonably clean, 
to have played the part of a man or 
woman with some reasonable fulness, 
to have often resisted the diabolic, 
and at the end to be still resisting it, 
is for the poor human soldier to have 
done right well. To ask to see some 
fruit of our endeavour is but a tran- 
scendental way of serving for reward ; 
and what we take to be contempt of 
self is only greed of hire. 

And again if we require so much 
of ourselves, shall we not require 
much of others ? If we do not ge- 
nially judge our own deficiencies, is 
it not to be feared we shall be even 
stern to the trespasses of others ? And 
he who (looking back upon his own 
life) can see no more than that he 
has been unconscionably long a-dy- 
ing, will he not be tempted to think 

4 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

his neighbour unconscionably long of 
getting hanged ? It is probable that 
nearly all who think of conduct at 
all, think of it too much ; it is certain 
we all think too much of sin. We are 
not damned for doing wrong, but for 
not doing right; Christ would never 
hear of negative morality ; thou shalt 
was ever his word, with which he 
superseded thou shalt not. To make 
our idea of morality centre on for- 
bidden acts is to defile the imagina- 
tion and to introduce into our judg- 
ments of our fellow-men a secret ele- 
ment of gusto. If a thing is wrong 
for us, we should not dwell upon the 
thought of it ; or we shall soon dwell 
upon it with inverted pleasure. If we 
cannot drive it from our minds— one 
thing of two : either our creed is in 
the wrong and we must more indul- 

5 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

gently remodel it ; or else, if our mo- 
rality be in the right, we are criminal 
lunatics and should place our persons 
in restraint. A mark of such unwhole- 
somely divided minds is the passion 
for interference with others : the Fox 
without the Tail was of this breed, 
but had (if his biographer is to be 
trusted) a certain antique civility 
now out of date. A man may have a 
flaw, a weakness, that unfits him for 
the duties of life, that spoils his tem- 
per, that threatens his integrity, or 
that betrays him into cruelty. It has 
to be conquered ; but it must never 
be suffered to engross his thoughts. 
The true duties lie all upon the far- 
ther side, and must be attended to 
with a whole mind so soon as this 
preliminary clearing of the decks has 
been effected. In order that he may 
6 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

be kind and honest, it may be need- 
ful he should become a total ab- 
stainer ; let him become so then, and 
the next day let him forget the cir- 
cumstance. Trying to be kind and 
honest will require all his thoughts ; 
a mortified appetite is never a wise 
companion ; in so far as he has had 
to mortify an appetite, he will still 
be the worse man ; and of such an 
one a great deal of cheerfulness will 
be required in judging life, and a 
great deal of humihty in judging 
others. 

It may be argued again that dis- 
satisfaction with our life's endeavour 
springs in some degree from dulness. 
We require higher tasks, because we 
do not recognise the height of those 
we have. Trying to be kind and hon- 
est seems an affair too simple and too 
7 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

inconsequential for gentlemen of our 
heroic mould ; we had rather set our- 
selves to something bold, arduous, 
and conclusive; we had rather found 
a schism or suppress a heresy, cut off 
a hand or mortify an appetite. But 
the task before us, which is to co- 
endure with our existence, is rather 
one of microscopic fineness, and the 
heroism required is that of patience. 
There is no cutting of the Gordian 
knots of life ; each must be smilingly 
unravelled. 

To be honest, to be kind — to earn 
a little and to spend a little less, to 
make upon the whole a family hap- 
pier for his presence, to renounce when 
that shall be necessary and not be 
embittered, to keep a few friends but 
these without capitulation — above 
all, on the same grim condition, to 

8 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

keep friends with himself — here is a 
task for all that a man has of forti- 
tude and delicacy. He has an ambi- 
tious soul who would ask more ; he 
has a hopeful spirit who should look 
in such an enterprise to be success- 
ful. There is indeed one element in 
human destiny that not blindness it- 
self can controvert : whatever else we 
are intended to do, we are not in- 
tended to succeed ; failure is the fate 
allotted. It is so in every art and 
study ; it is so above all in the con- 
tinent art of living well. Here is a 
pleasant thought for the year's end or 
for the end of life : Only self-decep- 
tion will be satisfied, and there need 
be no despair for the despairer. 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

II 

X5UT Christmas is not only the 
mile-mark of another year, moving 
us to thoughts of self-examination : 
it is a season, from all its associations, 
whether domestic or religious, sug- 
gesting thoughts of joy. A man dis- 
satisfied with his endeavours is a man 
tempted to sadness. And in the midst 
of the winter, when his life runs low- 
est and he is reminded of the empty 
chairs of his beloved, it is well he 
should be condemned to this fashion 
of the smiling face. Noble disappoint- 
ment, noble self-denial are not to be 
admired, not even to be pardoned, if 
they bring bitterness. It is one thing 
to enter the kingdom of heaven maim ; 
another to maim yourself and stay 
without. And the kingdom of heaven 

10 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

is of the childlike, of those who are 
easy to please, who love and who give 
pleasure. Mighty men of their hands, 
the smiters and the builders and the 
judges, have lived long and done 
sternly and yet preserved this lovely 
character ; and among our carpet in- 
terests and twopenny concerns, the 
shame were indehble if we should 
lose it. Gentleness and cheerfulness, 
these come before all morality ; they 
are the perfect duties. And it is the 
trouble with moral men that they 
have neither one nor other. It was 
the moral man, the Pharisee, whom 
Christ could not away with. If your 
morals make you dreary, depend upon 
it they are wrong. I do not say "give 
them up," for they may be all you 
have ; but conceal them like a vice, 
lest they should spoil the lives of bet- 
11 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

ter and simpler people. 

A strange temptation attends upon 
man : to keep his eye on pleasures, 
even when he will not share in them ; 
to aim all his morals against them. 
This very year a lady (singular icon- 
oclast ! ) proclaimed a crusade against 
dolls ; and the racy sermon against 
lust is a feature of the age. I venture 
to call such moralists insincere. At 
any excess or perversion of a natural 
appetite, their lyre sounds of itself 
with relishing denunciations ; but for 
all displays of the truly diabolic — 
envy, malice, the mean lie, the mean 
silence, the calumnious truth, the 
backbiter, the petty tyrant, the pee- 
vish poisoner of family life — their 
standard is quite different. These are 
wrong, they will admit, yet somehow 
not so wrong ; there is no zeal in their 

12 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

assault on them, no secret element of 
gusto warms up the sermon ; it is for 
things not wrong in themselves that 
they reserve the choicest of their in- 
dignation. A man may naturally dis- 
claim all moral kinship with the Rev- 
erend Mr. Zola or the hobgoblin old 
lady of the dolls ; for these are gross 
and naked instances. And yet in each 
of us some similar element resides. 
The sight of a pleasure in which we 
cannot or else will not share moves 
us to a particular impatience. It may 
be because we are envious, or because 
we are sad, or because we dislike noise 
and romping — being so refined, or 
because — being so philosophic — we 
have an overweighing sense of life's 
gravity : at least, as we go on in 
years, we are all tempted to frown 
upon our neighbour's pleasures. Peo- 

13 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

pie are nowadays so fond of resisting 
temptations ; here is one to be re- 
sisted. They are fond of self-denial ; 
here is a propensity that cannot be 
too peremptorily denied. There is an' 
idea abroad among moral people that 
they should make their neighbours 
good. One person I have to make 
good : myself. But my duty to my 
neighbour is much more nearly ex- 
pressed by saying that I have to 
make him happy — if I may. 



r 



14 



V I 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

\ 
III 

Happiness and goodness, ac- 
cording to canting moralists, stand 
in the relation of effect and cause. 
There was never anything less proved 
or less probable : our happiness is never 
in our own hands; we inherit our 
constitution ; we stand buffet among 
friends and enemies;** we may be so 
built as to feel a sneer or an asper- 
sion with unusual keenness, and so 
circumstanced as to be unusually ex- 
posed to them ; we may have nerves 
very sensitive to pain, and be afflicted 
with a disease very painful. Virtue 
will not help us, and it is not meant 
to help us. It is not even its own re- 
Avard, except for the self-centred and 
— I had almost said — the unamiable. 
No man can pacify his conscience ; if 

15 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

quiet be what he want, he shall do 
better to let that organ perish from 
disuse. And to avoid the penalties of 
the law, and the minor capitis dimi- 
nutio of social ostracism, is an affair 
of wisdom — of cunning, if you will — 
and not of virtue. 

In his own life, then, a man is not 
to expect happiness, only to profit 
by it gladly when it shall arise ; he is 
on duty here ; he knows not how or 
why, and does not need to know ; he 
knows not for what hire, and must 
not ask. Somehow or other, though 
he does not know what goodness is, 
he must try to be good ; somehow or 
other, though he cannot tell what 
will do it, he must try to give happi- 
ness to others. And no doubt there 
comes in here a frequent clash of 
duties. How far is he to make his 
16 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

neighbour happy ? How far must he 
respect that smihng face, so easy to 
cloud, so hard to brighten again ? 
And how far, on the other side, is 
he bound to be his brother's keeper 
and the prophet of his own moraHty? 
How far must he resent evil ? 

The difficulty is that we have little 
guidance ; Christ's sayings on the 
point being hard to reconcile with 
each other, and (the most of them) 
hard to accept. But the truth of his 
teaching would seem to be this : in 
our own person and fortune, we should 
be ready to accept and to pardon all ; 
it is our cheek we are to turn, ouj' coat 
that we are to give away to the man 
who has taken our cloak. But when 
another's face is buffeted, perhaps a 
little of the lion will become us best. 
That we are to suffer others to be 
17 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

injured, and stand by, is not conceiv- 
able and surely not desirable. Re- 
venge, says Bacon, is a kind of wild 
justice ; its judgments at least are 
delivered by an insane judge ; and in 
our own quarrel we can see nothing 
truly and do nothing wisely. But in 
the quarrel of our neighbour, let us 
be more bold. One person's happiness 
is as sacred as another's ; when we 
cannot defend both, let us defend 
one with a stout heart. It is only in 
so far as we are doing this, that we 
have any right to interfere : the de- 
fence of B is our only ground of 
action against A. A has as good a 
right to go to the devil, as we to go 
to glory ; and neither knows what he 
does. 

The truth is that all these inter- 
ventions and denunciations and mili- 

18 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

tant mongerings of moral half-truths, 
though they be sometimes needful, 
though they are often enjoyable, do 
yet belong to an inferior grade of 
duties. Ill-temper and envy and re- 
venge find here an arsenal of pious 
disguises ; this is the playground of 
inverted lusts. With a little more 
patience and a little less temper, a 
gentler and wiser method might be 
found in almost every case; and the 
knot that we cut by some fine heady 
quarrel-scene in private life, or, in 
pubhc affairs, by some denunciatory 
act against what we are pleased to 
call our neighbour's vices, might yet 
have been unwoven by the hand of 
sympathy. 



19 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

IV 
1 O look back upon the past year, 
and see how little we have striven 
and to what small purpose : and how 
often we have been cowardly and 
hung back, or temerarious and rushed 
unwisely in ; and how every day and 
all day long we have transgressed the 
law of kindness ; — it may seem a para- 
dox, but in the bitterness of these dis- 
coveries, a certain consolation resides. 
Life is not designed to minister to a 
man's vanity. He goes upon his long 
business most of the time with a 
hanging head, and all the time like 
a blind child. Full of rewards and 
pleasures as it is^ — so that to see the 
day break or the moon rise, or to 
meet a friend, or to hear the dinner- 
call when he is hungry, fills him with 

20 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

surprising joys — this world is yet for 
him no abiding city. Friendships fall 
through, health fails, weariness assails 
him ; year after year, he must thumb 
the hardly varying record of his own 
weakness and folly. It is a friendly 
process of detachment. When the 
time comes that he should go, there 
need be few illusions left about him- 
self. Here lies one who meant well, 
tried a little, failed much: — surely 
that may be his epitaph, of which he 
need not be ashamed. Nor will he 
complain at the summons which calls 
a defeated soldier from the field : de- 
feated, ay, if he were Paul or Marcus 
Aurelius ! — but if there is still one 
inch of fight in his old spirit, undis- 
honoured. The faith which sustained 
him in his life-long blindness and life- 
long disappointment will scarce even 

21 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

be required in this last formality of 
laying down his arms. Give him a 
march with his old bones ; there, out 
of the glorious sun-coloured earth, 
out of the day and the dust and the 
ecstasy — there goes another Faithful 
Failure ! 

From a recent book of verse, where 
there is more than one such beautiful 
and manly poem, I take this memo- 
rial piece : it says better than I can, 
what I love to think ; let it be our 
parting word. 

"^ late lark tzoitters^/rom the quiet skies ; 
Andjrom the west, 
Where the sun, his day's work ended, 
Lingers as in content. 
There Jails on the old, gray city 
An injluence luminous and serene, 
A shining peace. 



22 



£¥^ 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

" The smoke ascends 
In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires 
Shine, and are changed. In the valley 
Shadows rise. The lai'k sings on. The sun. 
Closing his benediction, 
Sinks, and the darkening air 
Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night — 
Night, with her train of stars 
And her great gift of sleep. 

^^So he my passing ! 
My task accomplished and the long day done, 
My ivages taken, and in my heart 
Some late lark singing. 
Let me he gathered to the quiet west. 
The sundown splendid and serene. 
Death:' ^ 

[1888.] 



23 



NOTES 

' i. e. In the pages of Scribner's Magazine 

(1888). 

^ From A Book of Verses by William Ernest 
Henley. D. Nutt, 1888. 



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